A simple data set on mutual military build-ups and war, useful for teaching about a long-standing empirical debate in international relations by way of basic tests (like a chi-square test).
Format
A data frame with 2324 observations on the following 9 variables.
ccode1a Correlates of War state code
ccode2another Correlates of War state code
tssr_ida rivalry identifier
micnumthe start year of a confrontation between the two states
yearthe start year of a confrontation between the two states
dyfatminthe minimum estimated dyadic fatalities in the confrontation
dyfatminthe maximum estimated dyadic fatalities in the confrontation
sumeventsthe total number of events in the confrontation
mmba dummy variable that equals 1 if the confrontation came after the start of a mutual military build-up
Details
The unit of analysis for these data are non-directed dyadic confrontations for strategic rivals. Be mindful that confrontations start with the first event of any kind. See Gibler and Miller (2024a, 2024b) for more about events and confrontations. See Thompson et al. (2021) for more information about strategic rivalries.
Mutual military build-ups (MMBs, for short) are a slightly more evasive label I'm using for the more familiar "arms race." They are operationalized largely from Gibler et al. (2005). Briefly: mutual military build-ups are any episode in 1) a rivalry relationship where 2) each dyadic partner is increasing their military expenditure or personnel, 3) eight percent or more from the previous year, 4) for at least three years where 5) historical evidence largely corroborates a directionality in the mobilization of the kind we would broadly conceptualize (a la Richardson, 1939).
The data I recreate here follow Gibler et al. (2005), but use newer capabilities and rivalry data. I further employ some case exclusion rules that would not otherwise be evident in a reading of Gibler et al. (2005). First, I take some care to exclude cases where it is pretty clear that what Gibler et al. (2005) call an arms race is more accurately just the mobilization of the war itself. For example, their arms race #26 between China and Japan occurs between 1940 and 1944, though the ongoing war between both comfortably covers it. Related, I employ an admittedly ad hoc termination date to end when we might comfortably note a war is ongoing (see: the various World War 1 arms races). Further, I often extend a year to an arms race if one side started mobilizing first and the other side only started mobilizing the next year and/or one side continued mobilizing for a year after the other stopped. This is why, for example, I have an extra in the Spain-Morocco build-up in the early 1970s (Spain mobilized through 1975). There were some cases where I disagreed that something could be considered an arms race/mutual military build-up by this metric. For example, the build-up observed between Somalia and Ethiopia in the 1970s (their arms race #44) is an interesting case where it's clear Ethiopia is mobilizing. However, the data suggest only one year of mobilization for Somalia (1974). I remove those cases from my recreation.
References
Gibler, Douglas M. 2005. "Taking Arms against a Sea of Troubles: Conventional Arms Races during Periods of Rivalry" Journal of Peace Research 42(2): 131-47.
Gibler, Douglas M., and Steven V. Miller. 2024a. "The Militarized Interstate Confrontation Dataset, 1816-2014." Journal of Conflict Resolution 68(2–3): 562–86.
Gibler, Douglas M., and Steven V. Miller. 2024b. "The Militarized Interstate Events (MIE) Dataset, 1816–2014." Conflict Management and Peace Science 41(4): 463–81.
Richardson, Lewis F. 1939. Generalized Foreign Politics. Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, William R., Kentaro Sakuwa, and Prashant Hosur Suhas. 2021. Analyzing Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Types of Rivalry, Regional Variation, and Escalation/De-escalation. Springer.